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I think certification is secondary. The most important thing is liability. The problem is that software problems are ephemeral and often gets disregarded. If a

I think certification is secondary. The most important thing is liability. The problem is that software problems are ephemeral and often gets disregarded. If a software is slow, people seems to just live with it and/or just buy faster computers. Just think about how weird it is if things just randomly fall of, it happens so irregularly that I don't expect them to happen. This is simply not true of software.

throwaway2037 4y ago
If software engineers in a specific field (automotive) were held liable for bugs in their software, no one would want those jobs. Would you?
- kajaktum 4y ago
  then why would engineers in other industries accept theirs? IMO software should move a lot slower, but the economy does not work that way. There's way too many experimental things that go live in production.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    I think it was either Bjarne Stroustrup, Scott Meyers, or Herb Sutter who said that if we "went slower" (took less risks / program more like embedded / NASA / JAXA / ESA), we would still be living in the computing stone age. The real trick is to take calculated risks given your business environment and constraints. Usually, on any given team, there is one person who thinks they are "flying to the moon" with their accounting software (or whatever). And their pace is ridiculously slow, and code vastly over-designed and tested. They are always planning for once in 10,000 years events.
- naasking 4y ago
  > If software engineers in a specific field (automotive) were held liable for bugs in their software, no one would want those jobs. Would you? If almost no one wants them, then they would pay very well and be in high demand, and that comes with lots of benefits and perks, and you can require the use of the best tools to ensure those disastrous outcomes don't happen. So yes, I'd take that job.

throwaway2037 4y ago

If software engineers in a specific field (automotive) were held liable for bugs in their software, no one would want those jobs. Would you?

kajaktum 4y ago
then why would engineers in other industries accept theirs? IMO software should move a lot slower, but the economy does not work that way. There's way too many experimental things that go live in production.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  I think it was either Bjarne Stroustrup, Scott Meyers, or Herb Sutter who said that if we "went slower" (took less risks / program more like embedded / NASA / JAXA / ESA), we would still be living in the computing stone age. The real trick is to take calculated risks given your business environment and constraints. Usually, on any given team, there is one person who thinks they are "flying to the moon" with their accounting software (or whatever). And their pace is ridiculously slow, and code vastly over-designed and tested. They are always planning for once in 10,000 years events.
naasking 4y ago
> If software engineers in a specific field (automotive) were held liable for bugs in their software, no one would want those jobs. Would you? If almost no one wants them, then they would pay very well and be in high demand, and that comes with lots of benefits and perks, and you can require the use of the best tools to ensure those disastrous outcomes don't happen. So yes, I'd take that job.